At the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro\u2014the composer\u2019s birthplace on the Adriatic\u2014it is always a treat when a major work of the composer\u2019s maturity, such as one of his later Neapolitan operas or his Parisian works, is included among the three principal offerings. Such was the case this year when the festival produced his very last Italian opera, Semiramide<\/i>, which was first seen in Venice in 1823, not long before Rossini moved to Paris. It should be borne in mind that Rossini\u2019s mature years as an opera composer extended only to 1829, when at thirty-seven he stopped writing them altogether, but if any opera can be considered the crowning glory of his Italian career (which, of course, is most of his career) it is Semiramide<\/i>. And there is nothing immature about it.<\/p>\n
At the time of the work\u2019s composition, most operagoers would have associated its subject with Pietro Metastasio\u2019s libretto of the same title, which had been set to music by numerous composers. Rossini\u2019s opera, with a new libretto by Gaetano Rossi, eclipsed all these renditions but went through its own period of temporary eclipse, only to be rediscovered in the latter part of the twentieth century. Unlike Metastasio\u2019s version, it is based on Voltaire\u2019s tragedy S\u00e9miramis<\/i>. An Oedipal encounter between Semiramide, the queen of Babylon, and Ninia, her long-lost son who under the name of Arsace has forged a brilliant military career, is intimated when Semiramide chooses Arsace as Babylon\u2019s new king and her husband. Their wedding is stopped and the marriage averted by the timely appearance of the ghost of Semiramide\u2019s husband, Nino. New problems arise for Arsace, however, when he learns that he is Semiramide\u2019s son and that she was complicit in his father\u2019s murder by the prince Assur. The situation lands Arsace in a classic operatic dilemma: he is duty-bound to avenge his father\u2019s murder, but to do so requires the death of his mother.<\/p>\n
The drama unfolds at a leisurely pace in a series of magnificent, formally expansive musical numbers, over the course of which the principal characters emerge as flesh-and-blood personages. Besides the central dilemma, Arsace faces uncertainty in his relationship with his beloved, the princess Azema. Semiramide\u2019s reunion with her son only intensifies her anguish over the remorse she feels for her role in her husband\u2019s death. The declining fortunes of Assur, who once aspired to the throne, gradually reduce him to a desperate, mentally unhinged figure.<\/p>\n